


Lessons in Validation and Understanding

by prairiecrow



Series: Lessons in Humanity [9]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: A.I. to Human, Dom Steve, Dom Tony, Dom/sub, Established Relationship, Internalized Homophobia, Loving Dominance, M/M, Sassy Tony, Stern Dominance, Steve Is At War With Himself, Sub Jarvis, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-09 11:52:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He lay still in the darkness of Tony Stark's bedroom, listening to the slow measured breathing of the two men who shared this wide luxurious bed with him while their heat infused his languid flesh, and wondered all over again at how the turmoil in his life had come down to this beautiful shared silence. After so many years spent battling his inner demons it felt strange to know them — indeed, to welcome them — not as relentless foes, but as friends clasped hand in hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons in Validation and Understanding

He lay still in the darkness of Tony Stark's bedroom, listening to the slow measured breathing of the two men who shared this wide luxurious bed with him while their heat infused his languid flesh, and wondered all over again at how the turmoil in his life had come down to this beautiful shared silence. After so many years spent battling his inner demons it felt strange to know them — indeed, to welcome them — not as relentless foes, but as friends clasped hand in hand. 

They'd passed a hot yearning hour of striving together, their own bodies the battlefields, but the truth behind it was this peace that lay in each other's arms. There was a time when Steve would have beaten himself up for losing the war against his own weaknesses, but these days…

Well. Even the oldest dog could be taught a new trick from time to time.

*****************************************************

 _All his adult life, Steve Rogers had lived with a secret and deeply shameful internal contradiction, one that the blessings of the serum had only made worse. As Captain America he was an icon of bravery and virtue and compassion for an entire nation, the first line of defence against all tyrants and toughs whose only goal was to grind everyone else to dust beneath their heels. He abhorred causing suffering, and in fact had made a career out of going to any lengths to lift the yoke of pain from the shoulders of his fellow men and to keep them safe…_  

_… except when it came to sex. Even there he was mostly good (in the strictest sense of the term), his desires mostly benevolent, but every so often he'd caught himself thinking about ropes, and handcuffs… and maybe even something worse, something that whistled through the air and cut bruises into trembling flesh._

_He'd dealt with that personal darkness by not thinking about it at all. He'd never wanted to hurt Peggy, thank God — at least, not in any way that made it to his conscious awareness — although sometimes he'd dreamed of her in tight leather, and woken up hard and aching with guilt as much as with lust. And he made damned sure that nobody else ever suspected the fundamental irony of his existence: that the larger-than-life hero dedicated to defending the cause of freedom was, in the deepest animal part of him, nothing more than a bully himself._

_With men it was worse. The things he wanted to do to men were harder, hotter, and more reprehensible by far. It had taken all his willpower to turn his mind away from the cruel reflections of them bowed and begging beneath his hand — but he'd succeeded, even if only barely. And the two men he'd been attracted to during the War had never guessed that he had looked at them with an honourable commander's eyes while longing to break them to his will. It was even worse than being a fag, and that was one of the most awful things a man could have been back in that less complicated time._

***************************************************** 

They were both turned toward him (his own back was to the door in a guarding position), with Tony closest to the floor-to-ceiling windows and Jarvis sandwiched in between them, all of them naked and so close that each could feel every breath and heartbeat of the others. Tony was snuggled up against Jarvis's back, one sturdy arm wrapped around his slender waist and nose pressed to the close-cropped blond hair at the back of his skull; Jarvis's head was tucked under Steve's chin, his left arm curved around Steve's ribs; and Steve's arm encircled them both, binding them all together. Their warmth and scent lay over him like sunlight, like a benediction — perhaps even like love. 

They knew what he was, and they had nevertheless welcomed him into their bed and into their lives. The sounds they'd both made this evening were still fresh in his memory: sighs and moans and whimpers, mixed with exhortations to go harder, deeper, faster. Jarvis's wrists and shoulders bore the marks of his passion, and even Tony would be sporting a bruise or two come morning.

Yet they slept in his arms with perfect trust, as if they'd always known him better than he knew himself.

*****************************************************

_It helped that he'd never gotten more intimate with anyone than a few kisses and a bit of petting, and one bare-bones blow job that had taken all of a minute and a half; the beast within hadn't had a real opportunity to come out and use its claws on innocent (sweet, tender, vulnerable) flesh. Another thing he'd avoided considering was the fact that part of his reticence about getting intimate with any woman arose from the need to protect them as much as from an inherent sense of modesty and a solid sense of moral propriety. He'd had a solid grasp on the chain that bound the throat of the monster within, turning the force of its denied hunger back on itself to keep it firmly under control even when the rampantly sexual imagery of the twenty-first century inflamed its appetites, even when the Internet promised to introduce him to pictures (and dear God, to video, or even to women willing to place themselves at his disposal for a price) that would rouse it to screaming howls of savage need._

_He'd kept it all under wraps so total that most of the time even he could ignore its existence — until he'd met Tony Stark, and through him, Jarvis. Tony, whose cocky defiance and smart-assed insubordination had made Steve want to teach him some respect from the beginning; Tony, who was comfortable and happy in the role of sexual Dominant and more than willing to both encourage Steve and to teach him ("Not that you need any lessons, Captain: your base instincts are spot on, you're a natural at this, a complete genius in the bedroom…"). Tony, who wasn't averse to letting Steve order him around a bit but who had made it clear from the beginning that he came as a package with his personal assistant, and that Jarvis was the submissive party in that particular pairing._

_Steve had never been sure quite what to make of Jarvis, so proper and prim and British, especially after he'd learned that the tall slim blond hadn't come from England at all but rather from Tony's endlessly fertile genius. Jarvis had always treated Steve with perfect courtesy, as he did all the Avengers — except Tony, who seemed to take great delight in their occasional sarcastic battles of wits — and Steve had never suspected for an instant that he was Tony's boyfriend, much less that they were in a long-term Dom/sub relationship. But he was, and they were, and Tony hadn't made any bones about the fact that if Steve wanted to hop into bed with him then Jarvis was coming along for the ride._  

_Steve, on the spur of the moment and running on pure instinct, had immediately agreed — and opened up Pandora's box, although the devils that he'd finally permitted to fly free had turned out to have the wings of angels after all._

*****************************************************

Jarvis stirred in his sleep, murmuring an incoherent query. Tony shifted nearer and held him tighter, answering with a fond little growl.

Steve kissed Jarvis's forehead and stroked Tony's back, until they both settled down under his touch with brief smiles that warmed him even more profoundly than the heat of their bodies. 

Trust. Peace. Companionship. 

He drew them both a little nearer, smiling when they sighed in unison and nestled closer against the protective rampart of his body.

*****************************************************

_He would never forget how Tony had been that first night — he was everything that Steve had hoped for, bright and bitchy and contrary and lusty, a marvellous double handful of masculine sass whose unrepentant defiance made every moment of compelled submission incalculably sweeter. Making Tony lick and suck his cock had been one of the genuine high points of Steve's life to date, and when he'd finally nudged his thick cockhead inside Tony's ass and felt him clench and groan around him, his body trying to fight back even as he begged for more…_

_And Jarvis had lain beneath them both, holding Tony close as Tony buried his flushed face in the angle of his neck, gazing up at Steve with hooded pale eyes and an expression both passively yielding and fiercely warning. Steve, who had already pumped out two orgasms inside Jarvis's willing body and felt the perfect sweetness of his submission, met that gaze squarely and had known even then how deeply Jarvis loved, and that he was the gatekeeper of everything important in Tony's life. Therefore he'd leaned in over Tony's bowed back and past his bent neck to press a heated kiss to Jarvis's lips, their first, a kiss that was also a promise:_ ** _I'm going to fuck him like there's no tomorrow, but he asked for this and it's not out of hate, oh God, no, never out of hate. Believe it._**  

_Jarvis had slipped one hand around the back of Tony's neck, cradling him even closer. Had looked into Steve's unblinking eyes and nodded once, fractionally._

_And Steve had pounded Tony's upturned ass until he wailed, sobbing against Jarvis's shoulder while Jarvis whispered words of reassurance and love into his ear — and Tony had never said no._

**************************************************** 

He knew what it meant, being allowed to hold them like this. In particular, he appreciated the significance of being allowed this close to Jarvis. Tony was fiercely protective of his former A.I. for all sorts of reasons, and it spoke volumes that he permitted Steve to touch him in any way, much less to bind him and engage in impact play with him, and of course to forcefully fuck him in various inventive ways. 

Perhaps it was a "good cop/bad cop" game: Steve played the stern punishing Dom, and Tony got the chance to have his own performance as a tender and paternal Dom highlighted to maximum effect (although Steve would argue that Tony's cruelties were simply more subtle, what with his conspicuous taste for orgasm delay and control that sometimes drove Jarvis to absolute distraction). Clearly Tony got off on seeing Steve discipline Jarvis, doing things to him that Tony enjoyed watching but didn't particularly want to practice himself. It was part of what made them such a good fit for each other, because Steve would be lying if he claimed that he didn't enjoy witnessing Tony Stark's nurturing side come out on a fairly regular basis: it felt like an intimacy even greater than sex, being privileged to see past the cynical mask to the deeply emotional man beneath, to hear the word "love" flow from his lips as easily and as naturally as breathing.

Steve had experienced enough lies for one lifetime, no matter now long it had ended up being. So he lay silent in the shadows and held his lovers close, watching over them, protecting them — and though the words were never spoken, neither from Tony to him nor from him to either of them, he was dead certain that the situation between them was understood perfectly well.

When at last he closed his eyes, the darkness in his mind contained no trace of regret. It did not feel in the least like defeat. In fact, it felt exactly like home. 

THE END


End file.
